


our stained glass means nothing without light

by jadeandquartz



Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Apocalypse, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Tragedy, eldritch horror, general distressing eldritch-based views on death and destruction, somewhat self-destructive desire to give up personhood in favor of eldritch harmony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28644240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeandquartz/pseuds/jadeandquartz
Summary: No one understands what Allmother truly means. Thor whispers it reverently, at first, but then, as the years go by, whispers it more like a plea. You hate him. Or perhaps you pity him. Or perhaps a bit of both. You reign, but you are so tired. You are soinfinitelytired of standing lost and lonely at the prow of this world as it crashes and burns. You do not want to deny the void its rise any longer. You want nothing more than to give over control, then to bring itgloriouslyinto being.***A brief character study of Odin throughout the years.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	our stained glass means nothing without light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleboxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/gifts).



> title from "Sight" by Sleeping At Last

You have always been in love with the stars. They sing to you viciously, and you love them for it. You stand at the bay windows for hours and hours, sating yourself on their gluttonous glow, until Captain Freeren finally summons up the courage to tap you tentatively on the shoulder and ask for authorization to bring the flagship of the Allmother down into the Midgardian stratosphere.

Allmother is your title, and it means tragedy. It means that when you turn to look at the captain, you know that her shoulders are tense because she has a wife and child down on Midgard that she hasn’t seen in five years, and that her heart is beating at two times the normal pace for an Asgardian. She has not told you any of this information, and you have never read her file, but that does not change the awful _knowing_.

You give her the codes and stalk up to the observation deck, so you can be close to the stars for as long as possible. The ship descends, and you watch them turn red and furious through the glass, hear them scream-sob for you to come back and keep them company once more. Behind them, that ever-present looming line of melody warps and wails impatiently. The void, begging you to bring it more fully into being.

How long have you been hearing it? Have you heard it only in the last few years of your reign, as violence spreads and discontent grows like a choking weed? Or has it always been there faintly, ever since the day you gouged your own eye out on the steps of Hlidskjalf and let the crown be placed upon your head? Since the day you traded vision for wisdom and took the throne? 

***

You have become uncomfortable on terra firma. The earth feels too steady beneath your feet. You hate the rock. You hate the beat of your heart. You want to fly. You have no way of turning up the music while you are on Midgard. Its volume hovers at a constant whine, made dissonant by distance. The Asgardian councilors wonders why tears leech from your eye during meetings. You have long since given up on explaining. You know no one else has been blessed with your gift. 

Sleep is the only place where there is solace. The notes of music that penetrate your dreams are like drops of oil into water, slick and heavy and shining with promised things. When you wake, your covers are heaped across the cold metal floor of your luxury chambers, and the guard at your chamber door is standing over you with a look of concern, called inside by your cries. You are Allmother, so you know that there are 1,345,922 people on this planet, and that 40 of them are currently living in your palace. You know that even at this minute, five courtiers are planning to assassinate you within the next five years - but this guard works for none of them, so you let him go. You tell him you simply had a nightmare. The words could not be further from the truth. 

No one understands what Allmother truly means. Thor whispers it reverently, at first, but then, as the years go by, whispers it more like a plea. You hate him. Or perhaps you pity him. Or perhaps a bit of both. You reign, but you are so tired. You are so _infinitely_ tired of standing lost and lonely at the prow of this world as it crashes and burns. You do not want to deny the void its rise any longer. You want nothing more than to give over control, then to bring it _gloriously_ into being. 

***

When the missiles hit the Bifrost, you are lightyears away, and it doesn’t matter. You feel the heat wash down your skin, and the flesh of your body bubbles in sympathy with Baldur’s. He is screaming and screaming, and you remember with a faint smile the double-edged sword of nigh-immortality that all your people bear. Nothing can kill you - but when _nothing_ becomes _something_ , Asgardians take years and years to die, their spirits hovering for decades as their souls flicker and fade. 

Baldur does not stop screaming for seventy-five more years. By then, they have tracked down Loki, and the woman is kneeling in front of your throne, her hair matted and filthy, her eyes bright and her shoulders set. You wave your hand to send her to the pyre, but when you return to your chambers, you draft a secret missive to keep her brain from burning too. 

Maybe it is because a part of you is just too tired to hear another Asgardian scream so out of tune for decades more. Why waste it? Why let Loki bleed out alone? The layering of screams has always been more harmonic, more in tune with the stars. And you are sick of doing senseless, ugly things, things that grate against the ceaseless hum of the cosmos. The void whispers to you, drops of oiled rain breaking the surface of your dreams, telling you to take Loki along on the maiden voyage. You obey. It is such a joy to obey - to have faith without fickleness or fear, to follow the darkness and know that all the screams within it are beautiful in their despair. So perfectly aligned in melody. You have never before heard a symphony so true. 

The construction of the Bifrost continues. Baldur's death could not stop it. Loki and Sigyn could not stop it. Even Thor cannot stop it, no matter how many times he begs the Asgardian councilors to interfere. Workers are hired but you dismiss most of them, preferring to lift and cart the raw materials by yourself, to feed the metals and wrap the wires with your own two hands. You birth the Bifrost piece by piece. You feel time start to tick away like a great pocket watch, unwinding in reverse. Spiraling and spinning, towards a final, euphonic end. 

***

Years slip by. Soon, the world is nothing but a rainbow shimmer, and you are standing behind a podium at the launch of the Ratatosk Express - and _oh,_ the stars are sending waves of heat through your heart already. The void is stretching out its arms to embrace you - you who are nothing, _less_ than nothing, to it. And yet, you are dear enough for it to choose to call you home. What an honor. What an honor. You start crying from joy at the podium as you try yet again to explain - though, unsurprisingly, no one understands. The gathered crowds mutter that you are insane. But you have heard that word so many times that it has lost all meaning. Nothing really hurts you anymore. Nothing really feels like _anything_ anymore. 

You have your secret agents load Loki onto the train, an extra bit of dead weight to ensure everything goes as it should. The woman spends every day in the compartment staring at the asymmetrical sheet of glass which warps her reflection like a crumpled piece of paper. And you are Allmother - a curse, a cruelty, and a burden, feeling and seeing all parts of these wretched mortal minds. So you know that Loki is scrabbling at the walls of glass in her brain, trying to understand why her identity is as broken as wave-tossed shells on a sandy beach.

You do not feel any flickers of regret at what you have done to her. You know it was necessary, because the void cackles in triumph as it watches Loki writhe. So you smile blithely and go to the observation deck, to wait, to watch, to be closer to the stars. 

***

You have lost the ability to see yourself in the mirror. You find cameras to stare into, but there is no reflection in any of them; glass will no longer suffer the shock of your mortal form. You weep with joy.

You are diffusing further into the universe. The stars grow louder with each steady tick of the train. The Bifrost starts to hum, calcifying around the Ratatosk, a warm smothering embrace of amber around the squirming insects within. Loki is standing somewhere nearby now, shouting at you - but you have pressed your nose up against the bay windows of the observation deck, and you are laughing at the raw brilliance of the thousand rainbow things that leap and bound along the tracks ahead of you, dashing to meet the train.

The void reaches a climactic chord, and you fall on your knees in praise. It is the way that your people have praised you for centuries - but you know now that you are nothing, _less_ than nothing, and you know now the glory of accepting that, and you wonder if this is what paradise feels like. 

***

Thor does not say _Allmother_ when he steps through the filmy, gelatinous membranes that coat the train's walls. Instead, he accuses you, rage rippling through his voice like an earthquake. The hammer in his hand trembles, dripping bits of blood and gore onto the steely grey floor. 

In response, you just laugh and laugh and laugh. There is nothing he can do. There was never _anything_ he could do. You were always going to win. You were always headed here. The void was always going to take what was rightfully its own. You have simply followed the stars. You have simply conducted the symphony. You have simply given yourself up to divinity. What an honor. What an honor. What an honor. 

The glass shatters, like a spray of seawater against a rocky shore. You run after Thor, leaping into the embrace of the void - and soon all the essence of you strips away in rainbow ribbons, and there is no _you_ remaining at all, and cosmic beauty reigns, reigns, reigns. 

**Author's Note:**

> me, after listening to the Bifrost Incident for the first time last week, slapping this funky lil Norse mythos album: this bad boy can fit so many fascinating characters within it!! 
> 
> thank you to @littleboxes for letting me spiral in your inbox with my many Many thoughts about Odin. she’s such an interesting character, g a h; she has been living rent free in my mind for DAYS


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